But Mariella didn’t belong to her. No matter how much the child needed her, Moni couldn’t become a parent while working on this case, because a parent would never let Mariella dwell on this horrible day again.
Moni’s phone rang. It turned out that the demons in her past wouldn’t leave her alone either. She didn’t feel like answering, but if she didn’t, he’d show up on her doorstep with his calloused hand extended for her cash.
“Hi father,” she answered in an ice-cold tone.
“Saw you on the news today, darlin’,” Bo Williams said with the slur of alcohol on his lips. “You was carrying a little Mexican girl away from a crime scene. It was a nasty one, I reckon?”
Small talk. He always did it before getting to the point: money. With his work as an auto mechanic, he could probably pay his own way if it weren’t for all the boozing and gambling. The fact that this animal knew of someone as fragile and precious as Mariella settled in Moni’s stomach like rotten cheese.
“Yeah, it was rough out there today,” Moni said. “And I’m real busy working on the case so…”
“Great! I’ll make it right quick then,” he snapped. She could have hung up. She could have hung up on him right there and not answered the call when he rang her back. But, just like how she never fled her childhood home and never called the police on that abusive monster, Moni let him roll on. “My landlord’s fix’n to kick me out on my ass next month if I don’t make rent. You don’t wanna see your old man out on the street again, do ya?”
As much as that bastard deserved sleeping underneath a bridge every night, that would only give him more time out in public where he could encounter new victims. If he panhandled again, he might jump in the car with a woman and have his twisted fun.
God, why’d they let him out? Ten years in prison wasn’t nearly enough.
Bo Williams might have stayed in the pen if the girl he had beaten had died, but she survived to live on with barely any use in her arm. Moni should have protected her friend from him, but she led the girl right into her home. She had watched her father wrench Sasha’s arm behind her back until it broke. Her friend screamed and bawled tears. And when Moni begged him to stop, her father shoved her against the wall. She sat where she fell as Sasha’s beating continued. She covered her eyes and ears, like if she didn’t see or hear it, it wasn’t happening.
“You wanna be like this girl? You wanna be fashionable, don’t cha?” her father had shouted at Moni as he pulled her friend’s braids and slammed her face against the dining room table. “You think I’m gonna buy you all this nice shit? Well, when you earn a nickel, you can pay me back for all the money I wasted on you. I’m taking all those clothes your mother bought, taking the receipt and returning them to the store. I don’t want you ever splurging on that shit without my permission again!”
Moni gripped Mariella’s hand as the memories flooded back to her. She had once been a defenseless child. No one stuck up for her. Moni’s mother, bless her soul, had a fragile heart that couldn’t stand up to him.
Now this young girl had no one fighting for her. Everyone saw her as a jewelry case filled with gems of information. A case proves useful only until it’s opened. When it’s empty, it’s thrown away. Moni couldn’t let that happen to Mariella.
“I’ll send you a check for another nine-hundred dollars, but don’t you come by and pick it up,” Moni told her father. “I’ll mail it.”
She’d cut ties with him for good another time. Right now, Moni needed her father as far out of her life as possible.
“Nine-hundred?” he asked incredulously, like he had any negotiating power besides being annoying as hell. “How about an even grand?”
“I know what your rent is. I’m not paying you a nickel more.”
“Well, a man’s gotta eat, don’t he? You want me scrounging outta a dumpster like a raccoon?”
She wouldn’t mind watching that at all. Hell, she’d take a picture, frame it and hang it in her office.
“I’ll put your check in the mail tomorrow,” said Moni, who made sure she didn’t commit to an amount. Arguing with him killed her. Every time her old man raised his voice, her jaw would ache from where he used to slap it as he scolded her.
“I’m sure that you will. I know you’ve got a big case and all, but don’t forget your old pa.”
As they ended the call, Moni wished she could forget him. She understood why the little girl holding her hand and showing her a drawing of a manatee should be allowed to let her demons slip from her memory as well.
Moni sent DCF agent Tanya Roberts a text message: In court tomorrow, I will ask for temporary custody of the child. Let me protect her.
Without even looking at the words Moni had typed, Mariella gave her a big smile. She must have seen the shift in her demeanor towards her. Duty be dammed, Mariella was more than a witness.
“I’ll take care of you, baby,” Moni said as she put her arm around Mariella. “You won’t be afraid no more.”
If only Moni had someone to tell her those words.
Chapter 4
When the sun rises out over the Atlantic Ocean and dips its light into the Indian River Lagoon, sometimes it unveils the gruesome events of the night before. This time, a headless body rolled around in the water getting tossed against the sea wall behind a Merritt Island home. That’s where Detective Tom Sneed headed before he could finish his morning coffee and grits.
The fist of dread seized Sneed around his windpipe as he feared the worst. Sneed had gotten a call shortly before midnight from Maggie Kane, the wife of his poker buddy Matt Kane. Her husband hadn’t returned from a late afternoon fishing trip. After the murder investigation the prior morning made his first outing a wash, the son-of-a-gun vowed that he’d have a fresh catch for dinner that night. Sneed wondered whether someone had caught him first.
Sneed pulled alongside the first responder’s patrol car in the driveway. Summoning a deep breath into his barrel chest, he reached for the door. It felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. When he took command of a crime scene, he usually got an adrenaline rush like Bear Bryant leading the Crimson Tide onto the football field. This time, the black swoon reminded Sneed of that God-forsaken day; the day that he sped to the scene of an officer shooting and found his brother sprawled out on the pavement in a pool of blood. It took three men to stop him from shooting the nose ring off that punk-ass killer before they hauled him in front of a judge.
Brushing past the hysterical old man who owned the lagoon-side home, Sneed barged through the metal gateway and into the backyard. The moment he saw the sopping wet body, he knew. Kane had a tattoo on his left shoulder of his daughter’s name, “Angie” and her birthday. It matched the tats on the decapitated corpse.
“Matt,” Sneed muttered. Even if he was alive, his old buddy didn’t have ears left to hear him. Sneed raked his hand over his eyes and nose and then balled a fist over his mouth. He wished he could crack the jaw of the bastard who decapitated his friend-a father, a beer-guzzling jokester, a man who had tamed the lagoon like a rodeo champion.
Except, it seemed something in the lagoon had bitten Kane back. He had teeth puncture wounds on his right shoulder. Sneed had seen plenty of shark and gator bites, but that wasn’t one of them. Those wounds were left by flat molars that had barely pierced his skin.
“You’ve lived ‘round these parts longer than I have, Harrison,” Sneed told the towering officer who had arrived on the scene first. “What do you figure bit him?”
The lug nut scratched his curly head, as if waking up his brain and telling it to chip in. A former offensive lineman in small-time college ball, Clyde Harrison usually got the job done with his bear-like strength. At least he did as he was told, unlike some officers.